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Biomedical research teams receive grants

The American Society of News Editors announced on Tuesday, April 3, 2012, it will move its headquarters from Reston, Va., to the Reynolds Journalism Institute in Columbia.
KBIA
The American Society of News Editors announced on Tuesday, April 3, 2012, it will move its headquarters from Reston, Va., to the Reynolds Journalism Institute in Columbia.

The University of Missouri awarded $600,000 to biomedical research teams at the Reynolds Alumni Center on Tuesday. The grants are part of the University’s Coulter Translational Partnership Program, which supports innovations by faculty in the MU School of Medicine and College of Engineering.

“The idea is to create collaboration between people who understand taking care of patients at the beside in the clinic and the hospital and bioengineers who have an interest in inventing and innovating,” said Dr. Hal Williamson, MU Executive Vice Chair of Health Affairs.

Six research teams won grants for innovations including artificial cartilage engineering and transplants, cancer detection and tuberculosis identification.

MU School of Medicine Assistant Professor Renee Sullivan’s research focuses on creating smaller antennas for implantable devices.

“Our goal is really to make the implantable antenna more efficient and also smaller in size, so that more patients can benefit from this technology,” Sullivan said. “We think that while we have good use of these implantable antennas in pacemakers and defibrillators, we think that this can also benefit a wide variety of other medical devices.”

Williamson said the development in antennas will allow doctors to read signals from biomedical devices from longer distances and funding from the Coulter Program will help the innovation go further.

“It takes a lot of engineering to do that because they are already pretty small, but now, they’re going to get smaller,” Williamson said.

Cynthia Helphingstine, MU Program Director of the Coulter Translational Partnership, said the program will help the developments advance to commercialization so patients receive better care.